How To Market your Business On Facebook

In my last blog post, I had talked about why you must consider using Facebook for promoting your small business. In this blog I will be discussing about how you can use Facebook to the maximum advantage for your business.

Create a profile and a Fan Page

Facebook is free. You can create your profile and in the 'About Me' section you can mention about what your business is all about. Do include your photo in the profile as it lends credibility and the people looking for you can find you easily.

A profile on Facebook is basically ideal for personal use. However, a regular Facebook profile page would not work for a business. You are allowed to make only one account and use your real name for creating the profile. For business purposes, you must create a Fan page. A Fan Page can be created for a business, celebrity, event, some products, books, movies or anything. You can customize the Fan page by providing details about your business and put the logo of your company or a photo of your brand in the profile picture. When you write about your business, use crispy language to attract people and hold their attention and provide them with all the latest updates about your products, services, special offers, discount schemes and so on. 

Build an online community

Unlike a profile page, you do not send friend requests here. But you can always invite your friends or customers to ‘like’ your page. You can post about the new events related to your business such as launch of a new product or opening of a new branch and share useful tips or relevant news items with your customers.

If you have written a new blog post or have updated your website, you can post the urls on your Fan page with a catchy wall post.

You can also participate in the discussion boards, create questions for making your page more interactive, upload videos and photos and add your company’s YouTube channel. All these interactive features allow you to build a strong online community and stay in touch with your existing and potential customers. 

Be active on different groups

Apart from your own Fan page, you should also search for other groups which are relevant to your business and industry and join them. For instance, if you own an apparel shop, you can join various groups related to the textile industry. Once you join the group, you can take part in the discussion forums and share interesting tips and ideas.

Facebook is just one of the ways for marketing your business. In order to create a strong niche for yourself in market and establish a strong brand, you need to make efforts consistently and have patience. After all, a strong online presence is not built in a day. You have to work towards it. You can also be a part of interactive CEO Club or executive business coaching sessions where CEOs, presidents and senior executive meet once per month for a half day. In CEO Conference you can learn new ways and strategies to take your business to a higher level by discussing new strategies for utilizing social media optimally.

Benefits of a Facebook Business Page For Small Businesses

You must be having your personal profile on Facebook. But if you are looking to promote your small business on the web, the Facebook Business Page can prove to be a very effective platform.

Today, Facebook is the biggest social networking site with billions of users all over the world. Facebook is a sort of a big platform for business owners to advertise about their business. If used properly, Facebook can be a boon for reaching your target audience and boosting visibility for your small business.

Facebook is appealing

Facebook is very user-friendly. It is easy to use and appeals to all age groups of people. It is not complex like other software applications. Instead, Facebook offers quite an informal and casual approach to interact with your friends and customers and attract new potential customers.

Management is in your hands

Facebook gives you the freedom to manage your business page on your own. The entire control over the page, its content, images, and applications rests in your hand. You can control what you post and display or hide comments from customers. Besides you can post photos of the new products you are going to launch.

Instant feedback

The best part of Facebook is the instant feedback you receive from people. If you have launched a new product or a service, you can directly ask your fans on your Facebook Business page about their response or start a discussion or a contest, or announce a free offer.

If your customers are satisfied with your products, they would happily offer positive response and share your posts further with their friends.  The interactive nature of Facebook helps you to get some vital insights into customer behavior, their needs and their response towards your product.

These insights help you to work towards improving the quality of products by using the suggestions or recommendations offered by your customers.  You can also ask members in your  CEO Club or CEO Association for suggestions to improve the quality of your products and market it well on Facebook.

Search Engine Optimization

Facebook is extremely beneficial in terms of search engine marketing and optimization. You can post back links to your website as well as link your Facebook page from your site. If promoted well, your Facebook business page can appear in Google searches for relevant keywords. In short having a business page on Facebook extends your presence on the World Wide Web.

In order to stay ahead in competition these days, you have to stay updated and use Facebook for advertizing your business and your products and services. You can take the help of  CEO peer groups  or   CEO Clubs where members from non-competing industries can give you some good ideas on how they have used Facebook for boosting their sales, enhancing their brand visibility and promoting their business.